Solution Brief
TAP Aggregation with DANZ
The Missing Economics of Network Visibility
Arista DANZ provides the ability to cost-effectively capture and analyze all traffic and flows in a data center or service
provider network for enhanced visibility, security and troubleshooting without the prohibitive costs and scaling
limitations of traditional Network Packet Brokers.
Why It Matters
Alternative traffic visibility solutions require expensive and proprietary hardware that is not designed to scale with the
dynamics, density and speeds of next-generation data centers. Arista DANZ provides precision visibility economically,
using proven high-value data center ethernet switching platforms.
Who Should Care
IT professionals who need visibility into all network traffic for troubleshooting, security, compliance and reporting
purposes need DANZ.
What It Solves
High-density 10/40/100GbE TAP aggregation that is cost-effective, programmable, non-blocking, manageable and
scalable; DANZ scales to meet current and future needs for flexibility, agility, speed and scale.
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Solution Brief
Arista’s unique switch-based TAP
aggregation capabilities leverages stateof-the-art programmable switching
platforms to integrate continuous packet
capture ubiquitously into the network.
Introduction
Organizations are increasingly making the decision to build out-of-band monitoring
networks in response to the need for better visibility into application and network
performance. Out-of-band monitoring networks allow the consolidation of
tools into a centralized location and improve the agility of IT operations staff in
responding to problems. In addition, because they allow continuous visibility
into the network, monitoring networks are also becoming essential in enabling
improved security, compliance and forensic reporting within the data center.
Historically, visibility solutions for large data centers used a combination of network
patches, passive Test Access Points (TAPs), and port mirroring to feed traffic to
monitoring tools along with whatever embedded instrumentation (e.g., RMON/
SNMP) those tools could access from the network infrastructure. In some cases TAPs
were accessed directly by tools mobilized on crash-carts, and in other cases the
tools were pre-placed in the network wherever they were expected to be needed.
Continuous visibility and monitoring were impossible in this scenario.
As data center densities, dynamics and scale increased a new approach to data
access and network visibility became necessary. First to emerge on this scene were
Network Packet Brokers (NPBs) and their proprietary monitoring fabrics. NPBs
enabled centralization of tools and promised to enable IT to respond to network
issues more quickly by reconfiguring visibility on demand. NPBs provided basic
traffic conditioning, filtering, source identification, timestamping, and re-distribution
of traffic at appropriate speeds to centralized tools.
However, because they were based on expensive purpose-built network processors
and FPGAs, NPBs supported relatively low port densities and limited throughput
– at a very high cost per port. In most cases, achieving 100% visibility required
investments multiple times the cost of production network infrastructures. The
result: overwhelming acquisition and support cost – making it impossible to build
monitoring networks at rising data center scale or achieving adequate coverage.
The Arista Data ANalyZer (DANZ) feature set, described below, delivers an order
of magnitude improvement in the economics of cloud-scale visibility, delivering
scalable standards-based TAP aggregation and advanced mirroring with exceptional
density, flexibility and precision.
The Solution
Arista Networks® offers a new approach to TAP aggregation that delivers high
density, non-blocking 10/40/100GbE visibility powered by our award-winning
programmable data center switches and Arista EOS® software. Arista’s unique
switch-based TAP aggregation capabilities leverages state-of-the-art programmable
switching platforms to integrate continuous packet capture ubiquitously into the
network as shown in Figure 1. This helps avoid the need for additional hierarchically
deployed appliances, which require additional physical interconnects, power and
rack space. In smaller scale environments or remote facilities the Arista switching
platforms can leverage Arista’s advanced mirroring capabilities with integrated
packet processing, filtering and time-stamping functionality to allow direct
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Solution Brief
Arista’s TAP aggregation capabilities
deliver the ability to construct networks
that give continuous visibility into
network and application performance
and security. All of this comes with a cost
structure that is an order of magnitude
less than what has been possible
previously.
Figure 1: TAP Aggregation – Network
Monitoring Architecture with DANZ
Disruptive Economic Value
Arista’s TAP aggregation capabilities deliver the ability to construct networks that
give continuous visibility into network and application performance and security. All
of this comes with a cost structure that is an order of magnitude less than what has
been possible previously.
• Acquisition costs are substantially reduced by leveraging highperformance merchant silicon based switches
• Annual support costs are reduced by moving to higher reliability
platforms with common sparing & software
• High efficiency designs of Arista data center switches reduce power and
cooling costs
• High density and flexible configuration of the Arista platforms, up to
1152 ports of 10GbE or 96 ports of 100GbE each, assures rack space
requirements are minimized and needs can be met with simpler designs
• The operational ease-of-use and automation enabled by the
programmability of Arista EOS, CloudVision, and its support of industry
standard user interfaces reduces training and deployment time
Key Architectural Differentiators
The Arista TAP aggregation architecture delivers fundamentally new capabilities.
These include:
• High density, non-blocking, wire-speed 10/40/100GbE packet capture
with advanced traffic management capabilities provided in the same
hardware deployed in next-generation data centers, so all network traffic
can be monitored without loss and visibility orchestrated with the rest of
the data center infrastructure
• Software Defined Networking (SDN) support, enabled by the
programmability of Arista EOS and CloudVision, makes it possible to
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Solution Brief
Arista’s TAP aggregation solutions tackle
the need for flexible standards-based
and open management through a set
of integrated user and programmable
interfaces.
directly target and steer specific network flows to the desired analysis tools
• AgilePorts on 7150S-series and flexible MXP ports on 7280/7500E-series
allow speeds to be defined in software as 10/40/100GbE as needed to
support existing and future requirements without forklift upgrades
• Arista Latency ANalyZer (LANZ) feature enables detection of microbursts
and congestion at tool ports so that network operators can take
appropriate action to maintain network visibility under heavy loads
• Support for emerging network virtualization models, such as VXLAN
overlays, to maintain visibility of any workload in hyper-dynamic virtualized
public and private clouds
Ease of Management
As networks scale and incorporate dense virtualization and cloud capabilities, many
users find that the management tools do not scale well to address the issue of
visibility. Arista’s TAP aggregation solutions tackle the need for flexible standardsbased and open management through a set of integrated user and programmable
interfaces. These include an easy to access web-based graphical user interface
(GUI), an industry-standard and familiar network command line interface (CLI), and
an open programming interface utilizing direct programmable JavaScript Object
Notation (JSON) API structures. These interfaces are based on the core statedatabase of Arista EOS SysDB to provide compatibility and real-time synchronization
of configuration state, and to allow for integration with event-driven and cloud
platform-based orchestration and management layers.
• WEB-Based GUI: user friendly graphical interface for security and dev-ops
teams looking for a one-stop solution to configuring and checking the
operation of monitoring policies —accessible via CloudVision
• Industry-standard network CLI: for network operations and design teams
that are familiar with network configurations and operation. The Arista CLI
allows them to access the full power of Arista’s EOS operating system to
control both the monitoring networks and the physical infrastructure
• Directly programmable JSON API: eAPI provides a JavaScript Object
Notation (JSON) Linux-standard application programming interface for
configuration and monitoring of TAP aggregation, as well as advanced
mirroring and other system capabilities into tools and orchestration/
automation frameworks
Figure 2: TAP Aggregation Management
GUI, Industry-standard CLI, and LinuxJSON API
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Solution Brief
Advanced NPB functionality is supported
with the Arista’s DANZ feature set on
Arista 7150S-series and 7280SE-series
fixed configuration switches, and the
7500E-series modular switches. *
Network Packet Broker Capabilities
Advanced NPB functionality is supported with the Arista’s DANZ feature set on Arista
7150S-series and 7280SE-series fixed configuration switches, and the 7500E-series
modular switches. *
These capabilities include:
• The ability to aggregate, replicate and capture traffic for analysis without
affecting production flows
• Any-to-any packet replication at 10/40/100Gbps for up to 1152 10GbE,
288 40GbE, or 96 100GbE ports per system, making it possible to copy
traffic to multiple tools for analysis in any size network from single rack to
large cloud infrastructures
• Extensive L2/3/4 & DPI hardware filtering for traffic identification and
redistribution at wire-rate on all ports
• Flexible packet truncation for simplified data privacy and header analysis
with reduced tool load
• Precision packet time-stamping for precision transaction flow analysis to
the nanosecond level
• Source identification tagging to determine at what parts of the network
traffic was captured
• Flexible traffic redistribution with multiple load sharing schemes
to enable support of lower speed tools in high-speed networks with
configurable symmetrical and flow-correct placement of traffic on each
tool
7500E Series
7280SE and 7150S Series
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Solution Brief
With its best-in-class business value,
Arista lowers CAPEX and OPEX versus
traditional packet brokers. Arista DANZ
is the first solution to deliver high density
and programmability for monitoring
operations in a visibility solution that
is built to last, all based on proven
open switching platforms and without
proprietary fabrics or inflexible designs.
Summary
Next generation TAP aggregation using DANZ makes it possible to cost-effectively
and losslessly monitor all data center network traffic while capturing and analyzing
only the traffic that is important. With its best-in-class business value, Arista lowers
CAPEX and OPEX versus traditional packet brokers. Arista DANZ is the first solution
to deliver high density and programmability for monitoring operations in a
visibility solution that is built to last, all based on proven open switching platforms
and without proprietary fabrics or inflexible designs. With DANZ, customers can
transform opaque data center traffic into visibility for better application and network
performance management, traffic recording and analysis, security threat detection
and mitigation, compliance, and troubleshooting.
*Note: not all of the features are supported on all platforms at first availability check with your Arista Networks representative for more information and to discuss
your specific needs for scalable, cost-effective monitoring in the data center.
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Copyright © 2016 Arista Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. CloudVision, and EOS are registered trademarks and Arista Networks
is a trademark of Arista Networks, Inc. All other company names are trademarks of their respective holders. Information in this
document is subject to change without notice. Certain features may not yet be available. Arista Networks, Inc. assumes no
responsibility for any errors that may appear in this document. 11/15
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